A resource for organizing and presenting Conferences and Symposiums in an academic environment or associations.

Meeting & Event Planning

02/18/2014

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are proliferating. MOOCs replace the on-campus lecture experience with an online course delivered by one of the leading professors in their subject. Thus no matter where in the world a student resides, they have access to the top professor in each field.

The doomsday scenario for higher education providers is the unprecedented decrease in demand for professors and educators. Rather than each college or university needing a full-stock of qualified professors and lecturers, the world really only needs a hanful of experts in each field as now lectures from these experts are accessible by anyone with an Internet connection.

More relaisticly MOOC developers talk of a "blended model" in which professors teaching on campus, in actual classrooms use MOOCs in their lesson planning to free up time for more one-on-one learning and in-class discussion. (The thinking is if the professor isn't spending all their time prepping and delivering lectures then they have more time for student interaction.)

Institutions have been adopting MOOCs as a strategy to cut costs already looking to maintain the on-campus student by lowering administrative costs (hiring less professors).

Our interest from an academic conference planning perspective is, will students that study and learn remotely be successful in an interactive, knowledge sharing conference environment?

Are those skills of listening to live lectures in a group environment developed during the classroom lecture process?

09/18/2013

A comics aficionado recently posted an idea for a party game that could make your next ‘ice breaker” event a gag riot.

Torsten Adair of Comics Beat created rules for “Comics and Captions” in which single panel comics (those comics using a single frame) without word balloons are separated from their actual captions. Each player is given a “hand” of captions andthe goal is to find the funniest substitute caption for the displayed comic artwork.

Riffing on this idea consider giving each attendee one or two captions (perhaps on their ticket to get into the event) and have unrelated cartoons spread about the room – near the bar, near the food, near the sponsor’s exhibits, etc. Conversations and introductions will flow as attendees flow through the room to see results of their captions with the various cartoons. Those with particularly good pairings of cartoon and caption should be encouraged to share their results on the event’s social media platform such as Twitter or Facebook.

Interesting fact is that the game was inspired by a real life incident that occurred 1983 in which the Dayton Daily News accidently switched the captions of Dennis the Menace and The Far Side. The mistake was repeated again a few days later.

05/07/2013

May 4-12 is National Travel and Tourism Week and we focus attention
to the important role travel and tourism plays in our economy.

Travel and tourism is one of the largest industries in
America, one of the largest employers in America and is our largest services
export industry.

From my perspective travel and tourism is what allows
hundreds of autonomous schools to come together and creates the collaborative
institution of ‘higher learning.” It is
the magic that happens when you get people together from different parts of the
world to share, discuss, and debate ideas.

So we are taking a moment to thank the cab drivers, airplane
mechanics, bus boys, travel agents and everyone along the supply chain that
delivers that irreplaceable travel experience.

02/19/2013

Since I referenced Travel + Leisure’s most annoying security
checkpoints a few weeks ago I thought it would only be fair to balance that out
with some tips for easing the security part of your trip.

I found this list in The Plain Dealer over a year ago and
have kept it handy thinking it was worth sharing. Better late than never, right?

Here are 12 tips from the Transportation Security
Administration to make your trip through airport security as smooth as
possible..

1) Pack an organized carry-on using layers, bundling cords
of iPods and other small electronics and separating items by clothes. A
confusing stew can look suspicious. Remove big electronics such as laptops and
video cameras from carry-ons and from their cases.

2) Prepare a 1 quart-sized, clear, plastic ziptop bag of
lotion, shampoo and other liquids before arriving at the airport. Don't forget
to pull it from your carry-on and put it in the bin.

3) All coats and jackets have to go through the X-ray
machine.

4) Don't wrap gifts. If you do, a security officer may
unwrap them.

5) Undeveloped film can stay in your carry-on. If it's
faster than 800 speed, the X-ray machine can mar it with a pale stripe called
"X-ray fog." Declare high-speed film to a TSA agent so it can be
physically inspected instead of X-rayed.

6) Remove ALL items from your pockets before going through
an advanced imaging technology machine. Even your boarding pass and ID -- they
can trigger a pat-down because the AIT equipment reads them as an anomaly. So
carry them in your hand or, better yet, tuck them in a zipped pocket of your
carry-on after you show them to the guard at the podium.

7) Put shoes directly on the belt instead of in a bin. That
gives the officer a better look at them.

8) Body piercings can set off a metal detector alarm.
Passengers required to get extra screening may have to remove the body piercing
in private if they don't want a pat-down.

9) Travelers can wear head coverings and religious garments,
but they may get additional screening if the garb is loose-fitting or large
enough to hide a weapon.

10) Take infants and children out of strollers, send the
carriage through the X-ray machine and proceed through the detector. TSA
recommends that children who can walk go through screening machines on their
own. Otherwise, carry the child, facing forward if possible, through the
detector.

11) Remove pets from travel cases, send the case through the
X-ray and hold the pet in your arms when you go through screening. (No raised
arms required of you or travelers carrying infants).

12) Think before you speak. Jokes about bombs and terrorism
are not tolerated. Same goes for belligerent behavior and threats. They will
result in delays and possibly missed flights, the TSA warns.

02/12/2013

What we find in the academic conference world is that an abstract
may be submitted and accepted for a conference but that is about where the conference
preparation stops for the attendee until the end of the grading period or until
a (usually unrelated) grant application is completed.

That’s academia for you.
Although the time between abstract acceptance and conference can be
several months the only time that really counts is the time between the end of the
grading period or grant application due date and the hour of the presentation.

So in the spirit of
last minute arrangements we thought we should share with you a few of the 10
Signs You Aren't Prepared for Your Trip from SmarterTravel Staff Caroline
Costello.

Her list includes

Having no idea about the weather where you will be traveling

Your house looks the same (no timers set, no papers
cancelled, no lights left on)

You haven’t planned for the little things (like exchanging
currency or how you will be getting to the airport)

No one knows your going – and not just your Department’s
admin person but the graduate assistant your advising who will continue to be
coming to your office each week because you never told them you would be at a conference.

02/05/2013

Travel and Leisure released their list of the Most Annoying
Airport Security Checkpoints with some help from their readers.

Glancing at the list all the usual suspects are there – the large,
busy terminals of New York, Miami, Atlanta and Chicago. Each of these airports made the list because
of the sheer volume of passengers to be screened, the cramped security areas
(many of these terminals were build well before the evolution of airport
security screening), the ineptitude of the TSA personnel and, not to be
outdone, the sheer audacity of the travelers.

01/29/2013

Mike Mason who blogs for Zentila had a few tips for dealing
with attrition penalties.

You have a room block of 100 rooms but only 75 rooms get
used for your event leaving you with an attrition of 25 rooms; rooms you have
agreed to purchase from the hotel even though you have no one using them.

Mr. Mason suggests asking the hotel if you can purchase
additional Food & Beverage items instead of buying empty rooms. This is a technique we employed several years
ago when a client vastly over-estimated their room block needs (worth noting
that they were using a different meeting planner that we replaced but not
before the poorly written hotel contract was executed).

The client understood they were obligated to the money but
by purchasing additional F&B in the form of bottles of soda and pre-packaged
snacks instead of empty hotel rooms the client was able to use the refreshments
for a different event several weeks thus recouping some of the expense of the
attrition.

(Of course we had to work out the logistics of moving the
inventory from our registration area at the downtown hotel to the client’s on-campus
office but such is the life of the academic conference planner!)

Additional tips offered by Mr. Mason include applying the
attrition to a future meeting or conference if the client hosts additional
meetings in the same city.

01/22/2013

Much of our recent blog posts have focused on consortiums of
growing and active industries. What
happens when the flurry of interest subsides?

If your academic center houses consortiums or associations
that exist in name only why not take a look at their relevance. Perhaps a conference or symposium is
precisely what is needed to reinvigorate the concepts and discussions that were
deemed worthy enough years ago to warrant some formalized organization.

We can help. Academic
Ventures specializes in academic conferences of various sizes. You do not need to attract 200 people for a
successful conference. Let us help you
design a conference or symposium that is right for your organization.

01/15/2013

In a previous post we discussed the role academic
institutions can play in serving as hubs for a consortium based round an
industry. Our example was CE3 based at
Ohio University.

In many cases the role of serving as such a hub means being
at the center of any pro/con debate related to the industry. CE3 has taken a leadership role in corralling
the shale energy companies and local manufactures that desire a role in their
supply chain. I suspect they will soon be
in the eye of the storm that is brewing over the environmental issues related
to the shale gas boom.

What can be challenging for academic institutions is to
serve all sides fairly. The school has
an obligation to all which can make the school seem two-faced. But in the end, the institution should be able
to have its cake and it too as long as the school doesn’t forget why it is
exists. It exists for the dissemination of
ideas.

In our example Ohio University is active to the economic
development of our region by connecting industry producers to potential
suppliers. As the groundswell of
environmental concerns related to the drilling for shale gas increases, it
would behoove Ohio University to be at the front of that parade as well. A school, like the general public, is
multi-faceted. Aspects of the university
can be assisting the shale gas industry while other parts of the institution
can suppress the industry. The school’s
role is to facilitate the research and the discussion.

In the world of academic conferences we see this every
day. Facts can, and should, be debated
and supported even within the same institution.

01/08/2013

Universities are often used to house active (as well as
inactive) consortiums. It is easy to see
why since many schools offer an existing structure of office space, phones and
mailing addresses. Add to that the relative
ease of finding a director or coordinator among the faculty and the supply of
administrative as well as research support found among the student body.

A currently example of a loosely defined consortium is
growing around the Voinovich School for Leadership and Public Affairs at Oho
University.

From their website:

The Consortium for
Energy, Economics and the Environment (CE3) was formed in 2005 at Ohio
University as a partnership between the Voinovich School of Leadership and
Public Affairs, the Russ College of Engineering and the College of Arts and
Sciences. This partnership and the work performed by our faculty and staff are
a testament to this institution’s multidisciplinary approach to energy and
environmental issues.

So far this group has taken the lead in corralling the shale
energy companies and the Northeast Ohio manufacturers eager to supply them with
a web-based database. As this industry
matures you can bet the need for discussion and conferring will increase. Not only will more suppliers be attracted to
the industry but we will likely see the immergence of “best practices” and “industry
standards” that will need to be disseminated.